


Low Places

by mokuyoubi



Category: Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV), The Path (TV)
Genre: Drunken Kissing, M/M, Nigel unsurprisingly responds to violence, the depths of Cal's fucked upedness have yet to be plumbed...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7250149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mokuyoubi/pseuds/mokuyoubi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>     Then Max looks up from his drunken stupor and squints at the newcomer. “Hey!” he shouts, and again, until the guy looks up. “Aren’t you that guy from the tv?”</i><br/><i>The man’s shoulders rise up around his ears and he hunches over his drink, posture screaming </i>fuck off<i>. Max doesn’t take the hint. Now that he’s mentioned it, though, Nigel thinks he remembers where he saw the guy, a few months ago on some news talkshow.</i><br/><i>“Yeah,” Max says, sliding off his stool. “Yeah, you’re in that cult.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Low Places

This guy stumbles into the bar around midnight. He’s a little too well-groomed and tidy for a dive like this, which is what gets Nigel’s attention. There’s no card game tonight and it’s a Tuesday, so the place is pretty dead. 

Mister Clean-Cut makes his way up to the bar, pulling up a stool a few down from Nigel and asks for a tequila. He throws that back then asks for another. After the third, he just beckons for the bottle.

Huh, well, it just goes to show you never can fucking tell, because this guy’s putting away his liquor like a pro. There’s something familiar about him that has Nigel looking back from time to time, nothing more than idle curiosity born from boredom. Maybe he’s been in here before, maybe Nigel’s seen him around the neighbourhood.

Then Max looks up from his drunken stupor and squints at the newcomer. “Hey!” he shouts, and again, until the guy looks up. “Aren’t you that guy from the tv?”

The man’s shoulders rise up around his ears and he hunches over his drink, posture screaming _fuck off_. Max doesn’t take the hint. Now that he’s mentioned it, though, Nigel thinks he remembers where he saw the guy, a few months ago on some news talkshow.

“Yeah,” Max says, sliding off his stool. “Yeah, you’re in that cult.”

Nigel watches with keen interest now, at the way the man straightens, face deceptively calm. He’d been grudgingly impressed by the guy at the time. Kevin, or something? Nigel has known his fair share of confidence men in his line of business, but this guy. This guy is a real fucking piece of work, feigning genuine interest and concern. 

And the way he had with words, talking up his little congregation of freaks like they’re going to change the world with peace and sunshine or some bullshit. All with that pretty face and those wide, guileless blue eyes speaking to his sincerity. Eyes that now flash hostile and cold as ice as he turns to Max.

The guy stands, physically he’s not that impressive--slender and faintly muscled, neither tall nor short, but Nigel would fucking swear the air around him crackles with the potential for violence, just simmering under the surface. It’s fucking _riveting_ to watch.

Max laughs. He’s got a good three inches and sixty pounds on this guy, full sleeves and tattoos up his neck, a full and grizzled beard. He glances around the bar, making eye contact with Nigel and other of the regulars as if to say _can you believe this little fucker_. But he’s barely turned back before the guy is hauling back and following through on the punch with a sickening sound of flesh on flesh and cracking bone, and Max goes down hard.

“Hey,” Karen mutters, eyeing the guy warily. “Take that shit outside.”

“I think that shit is fucking done,” the guy says, with a swift kick to Max’s gut. Nigel, impressed, has to agree. The guy throws a handful of bills down on the bar. Then he grabs the bottle of tequila and heads for the side door that leads into the alley.

Nigel follows, as Max is floundering on the floor in a growing pool of blood, trying to push himself up and spewing obscenities at the man’s retreating form. “I’d stay down, man,” he says, bending to clap him on the shoulder.

Kevin--no, Calvin, that’s it--is half slumped against the wall outside, drinking straight from the bottle. “You come to kick my ass for your friend.”

Nigel snorts. “Not my friend, and that’s not really my style.”

He eyes Nigel warily, a sort of wounded fragility about him that is as fascinating as his physicality. It calls out to that part of Nigel that likes to shelter and protect. “I do have to wonder how the charismatic leader of our local _spiritual movement_ ended up in this shit hole.”

Calvin chuckles humourlessly. He side-eyes Nigel for a moment before holding out the bottle for him to take a swig, which Nigel does. “I mistakenly assumed no one would recognise me here.”

“You don’t strike me as the sort of person who tries to avoid recognition,” Nigel tells him. He takes another step closer so he can make out Calvin’s eyes in the dim light from the street and passes back the tequila.

“Sometimes…” Calvin’s eyes fall shut briefly, lashes casting deep shadows over the delicate lines of his cheekbones. If Nigel looks closely, he can see the fault lines where the man is starting to crack apart, and the darkness beneath, threatening to spill forth. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like, to live someone else’s life.”

Nigel sidles closer, until their arms are brushing. “I can almost guarantee it’s not any fucking better.”

Calvin’s breath catches and he looks down to the point of contact then up into Nigel’s face, gaze lingering on his mouth before flicking up to meet his eyes. Nigel can’t tell what he sees there, but he’d swear it feels like the guy is looking straight through to his soul and reading every single mistake he’s made in his sad fucking life.

“No,” Calvin agrees finally. “But maybe it’s not about finding better. Maybe it’s about knowing you’re not the only one drowning. Maybe it’s about finding a kindred spirit.”

“Well if that’s the case,” Nigel says, sweeping his thumb back and forth across the fine hair of Calvin’s forearm. “I can help with that.”

There’s a fluttery movement of Calvin’s long lashes, his throat working hard around a swallow. He makes an abortive step forward, then back, then forward again, eyes dipping closed. Licking his lips, he says, “I--ah--I’m not used to giving into temptation. The more I want a thing, the harder I resist it.”

“Then let me make it easy for you.” 

Nigel doesn’t hesitate any longer, stepping in between Calvin’s legs and crowding him against brick. Calvin goes with no resistance. Gone is the man of impressive strength from inside. Now he wilts against the wall, head fallen back, eyes darting beneath closed lids. Nigel lifts a hand to cup one close-shaven cheek, thumb drawing under the plush pink of his bottom lip, before leaning in that final distance.

For a moment, Calvin is still under Nigel’s mouth. His lips are as soft as any girl’s, parting obligingly for Nigel’s questing tongue, but not responding. Nigel’s calloused hands grab him roughly on the hips, swiping across bare skin between tidy little button down and pressed slacks. He nips at Calvin’s lip, snagging it between crooked teeth, and that’s it. That’s what Nigel was looking for.

It’s that same electric intensity from before, now funneled into Calvin’s kiss. Demanding and tremulous, hungry and cautious by turns. He moans and tilts his hips foward before he seems to remember himself and tries to draw away. Nigel isn’t having any of it. He surges close, hands up the back of Calvin’s shirt, holding him fast, and licks into his mouth, drawing forth more of those delicious sounds.

Calvin goes limp in his arms, unresisting when Nigel gets right up between his thighs and rolls their growing erections together. He stays there, frozen and unresponsive until Nigel sucks his way down Calvin’s throat, sucking the delicate hollow between shoulder and neck. Then Calvin hisses, arms coming up around Nigel’s shoulders. 

The bottle of tequila thumps against Nigel’s back, liquid sloshing, and falls from nerveless fingers to the ground, shattering and splashing, forgotten. Calvin’s hands instead weave their way through Nigel’s hair, clenching and holding fast to his neck. 

“Fuck,” he sighs, like everything in his life has led him to this point, and he’s crumbling under the weight of it. 

Nigel knows that feeling all too well. He draws back to look Calvin in the face, and then he can’t resist kissing him again, that swollen pink mouth and the lost expression in his bright blue eyes that make Nigel think that maybe all that sincerity on the television wasn’t a lie.

“I’ve got plenty of tequila back at my place,” he offers.

**Author's Note:**

> I might continue this with porn, IDK. I feel like Cal needs his ass wrecked, and Nigel is just the guy to do it.


End file.
